British Sugar plc Uses Egerton Consulting To Train And Accredit A New In-Company Reliability Engineering Team

Reliability Training and Mentoring for Accreditation

Egerton Consulting is currently leading a training and mentoring programme for a new team of Reliability Engineers that has been set up within British Sugar plc (“British Sugar”). The team is already using its new-found knowledge to identify unreliable or high maintenance plant in order to reduce whole life equipment costs. Successful participants in the 12 month programme will receive Reliability Engineering accreditation within the company.

The training and mentoring programme was set up by Steve Lynn, British Sugar’s recently appointed Head of Engineering. Steve appreciates the power of reliability engineering techniques from his prior experience in the Petrochemical Industry and he was keen to incorporate the techniques into the British Sugar toolbox. The company has a culture of continuous improvement and a primary consideration was that the reliability programme should be tailored to fit into the DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) processes that are already embedded within the organisation.

As well as following the DMAIC process, the training and mentoring programme has been developed to cover a wide range of reliability engineering fundamentals and techniques. Much of the training is being carried out by Egerton Consulting. However, where appropriate, specialist organisations are also contributing to the programme to ensure that participants receive a comprehensive and high quality of understanding of reliability techniques and issues. This understanding is being reinforced by the on-going mentoring support as participants begin applying these techniques within their own areas.

Much of British Sugar’s plant has been running for many years and is now in a period of life extension.  Also, operating conditions have sometimes changed considerably since the plant was first installed and so assets are being worked significantly harder than originally intended. However, British Sugar benefits from a committed and loyal workforce, many of whom have worked for the company for many years and have expert knowledge of the plant. Therefore staff have a real insight regarding the causes and patterns of equipment failure. By combining this insight with the discipline of reliability engineering techniques, programme participants are already starting to make significant savings within British Sugar, with more opportunities for ongoing saving being identified all the time.British Sugar Logo

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